


Reign of the May Queen

by Missy



Category: Midsommar (2019)
Genre: (but not really), Attempted Child Sacrifice, F/M, Implied Child Death, Marriage Gone Wrong, Murder, Poisoning, Rituals, Sacrifice, dark rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21893629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: She didn't mean to kill Pelle.
Relationships: Dani Ardor/Pelle (Midsommar)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 97
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	Reign of the May Queen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Croik](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Croik/gifts).



Dani didn’t mean to kill Pelle. 

He had been so kind of her for so many years, you see. Since she’d come into Harga as a foundling, motherless, fatherless, - soon boyfriendless. Pelle had opened his arms and wrapped them around her. 

Together they’d had children. A beautiful little boy and a delicate little girl. 

The little girl was who brought dread and fear into her parent’s lives. Constantly sick, the women and men of Harga had gathered around and shook their heads as she coughed her way through the winter. No poultice was enough to charm her toward health.

Eventually, the midwife who had so carefully helped Dani give birth came for the baby one night. Dani followed her, sobbing and screaming in stocking feet. But Pelle’s arms were around her again.

Wrapped around her. Holding. Suffocating.

“It’s the way of Harga, Dani,” he’d said gently. “She will never live a healthy life. She’s unequipped for the climate. To sacrifice her for the health of the other children will only give her life meaning.”

Dani screamed. The women of Harga screamed. They were unified in their misery, and what had once given Dani great comfort now made her feel all the more hysterical.

That night, after dinner, after their son had fallen into a deep sleep, Dani stood at the foot of the bad and stared at Pelle. Remembered that he hadn’t bothered to stand up for her, for their little girl. That he was nothing but a spineless agent of Harga.

Some other, alien force seemed to have control of her arm. She felt the rock, heavy in her palm. She heard his breathing soften and falter. 

She smelled his blood as she dashed his brain in with the rock, again and again, while their son slept a few feet away. 

That night, soaked in blood, she slipped away and found her daughter, set out to freeze in the night. Dani secreted her within the house, and nursed her through her illness, without telling a single soul but her son.

*** 

She told them he had gone back to America to finish his degree. And because she said it convincingly, repeatedly, they believed her, and repeated it to herself.

Much later, she dismembered Pelle and buried him beneath the foundation of Harga’s new smokehouse. 

*** 

Winter melted into spring, and spring into midsummer. 

She looked at her son and imagined him as a voluntary sacrifice, screaming in a burning building.

A plan formed, deep within her mind.

*** 

She danced more elegantly at the maypole than she had before, her eyes and arms expressive, her eyes dancing and wild.

When she was crowned she smiled and waved to her son.

“Come to my home,” she said. “I’ll make a feast.”

“But,” Maja said, “that’s not part of the tradition.”

“It is now,” Dani said.

*** 

Dani was careful as she passed the aquavit around. As they grew more and more sleepy, she laughed all the louder. Until every head hit a full plate of roast venison, she didn’t let up with her laughter, her small talk.

With her daughter on her back, holding her son’s hand – and a small amount of possessions strapped to her shoulders – Dani watched as her home burned to the ground.

Smiling the whole time.

***

Poetic justice had its licenses.

The reign of the May Queen stretched out into the following year, and most of the people in nearby villages knew of her. Too far from Harga to know what Dani had done, they did know enough about the tradition the Hargans had – and the beauty of the legendary American May Queen.

Dani smiled her way from town to town, place to place, coasting by on legend and charm as the children slept innocently abovestair or beside her. She worked her way closer to an airport every single day.

If she played her cards right, she’d be back in America by April.


End file.
